Voice Interface
by QTArbuthnot
Summary: The Doctor is alone on the TARDIS during the events of "The Snowmen". I DO NOT OWN ANY PART OF DOCTOR WHO (AND MUCH OF THE CONTENT OF THIS STORY EVEN LESS SO).


**A/N: This story contains a large amount of actual dialogue from various broadcast episodes of _Doctor Who_. I do not own this in any way shape or form. It is set on the TARDIS during the episode _The Snowmen_, as I hope will become clear.**

"No more", he croaked. "No more. I won't ruin any more lives".

Those words had become almost a mantra for his present existence – you couldn't call it a life, this sulking, hidden existence above the fogs of Victorian London. Yes, he would go for his angry, antisocial walks in the foggy, miserable back-streets; stomping his way around the less salubrious parts of the city he had spent so much of his life in. Occasionally he would run into one of his friends from Paternoster Row; though in reality, the friendship was all on their part nowadays. They would try to interest him in one of their escapades – or 'cases' as Vastra preferred to call them. "The Great Detective", she was called; and quite justly. She didn't need his help: she was more than capable, and had two equally capable assistants in Jenny and Strax. No. He would stay out of things now. He'd lost too much. His friends and loved ones had lost too much and it was all his fault.

"_There must be someone left in the universe I haven't screwed up yet!"_, groaned the Doctor, writhing on the floor of the TARDIS in obvious agony.  
"_Voice Interface enabled",_ said Amelia Pond, in a mechanical monotone.

"What!?", he squawked. "Amelia!?"

"_I am not Amelia Pond. I am a Voice Interface"._ The hologram of young Amelia faded out, to be replaced by someone he had thought never to see again:  
_"Hello. Hello, Doctor. It's so very, very nice to meet you.",_ smiled Idris, before fading away in her turn.  
"_There are better things to do today",_ said the Face of Boe.

"Trying to save me, Old Girl? Using the words of my friends, because we can't speak directly, now you don't have a human body? It's no good, Sexy: they're all gone. And it's all my fault.

"_It's stopped being fun, Doctor",_ said Tegan.

I know. You're stuck on a cloud with nothing to do and nowhere to go. I'd take you back home if I could so you could go off with someone else; but that's not possible any more. My fault again.

Adric appeared: _"...a lot of the time you don't really make sense"_.

"Well, who else should I blame? I take them from their ordinary, safe lives. Then I take them to some of the most dangerous times and places in the universe – and even outside it sometimes. I try to keep them safe, but I just keep putting them in more danger. They trust me to keep them safe but I fail them over and over again".  
Leela looked up _"The Evil One!",_ she exclaimed.  
"_Well nobody's perfect but that's overstating it a little!"_, chuckled the Doctor, reaching into his pocket for a bag of jelly babies.

I try to do the right thing, but I can't leave well enough alone. I took the Ponds back home any number of times, but I kept bringing them back for just one more adventure. And now they're lost forever. Sure, there are worse places than twentieth-century Manhattan, but it's the principle of the thing".

"_We'll never reach the Place of Perfection",_ wailed Katarina.

"I hope you did, Daughter of the Gods. If anyone deserved it it was you. But no thanks to me if you did. You never really understood what I'd got you into, and gave your life for me anyway. I didn't deserve you. I didn't deserve any of you"

"_We'd better keep an eye on him. He seems to have a knack of getting himself into trouble_", said Ian.

"Well, no more. I'm not going to get myself or anyone else into trouble any more, no matter what".

He slumped to the floor, leaning on the TARDIS console. The phone rang. He picked it up with considerable irritation:

"Yes? … What?" It was Vastra. Someone else trying to get him involved in things again...  
"It's Clara", she said. "I gave her the one-word test".  
"This is pointless", he snapped, becoming even more annoyed. "What did she say?"  
"Pond".


End file.
